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The adolescent Raquel could have borne a touch of humility. A high Latin ridge gave her nose an unattractive hook; she was affectionately known around school as "Birdlegs." Then she began to grow in all directions, and soon became an established figure on the beauty contest circuit. She won her first local contest at 15; later she was named Miss La Jolla, Miss San Diego, and finally Maid of California. Says Don Diego, who ran another contest she captured called the Fairest of the Fair Festival: "There were prettier girls around, but none had her figure or her drive. Most girls tremble before they go onstage. Raquel never did. You could tell by the way she got up there that she was the queen."
Her classmate and boyfriend, James Welch, thought so. A year after she graduated in 1958, he married the Fairest of the Fair. They had two children, Damon and Tahnee. Raquel the housewife interspersed domestic chores with dramatics classes at San Diego State College, and soon grew restive. After three years, the Welches parted—"inevitably," Welch now feels. Raquel headed for Dallas, where she made enough money modeling for Neiman-Marcus and hustling cocktails to have her nose fixed before assaulting Hollywood.
. . . I must not complain, for a life dream has come true. I am in Hollywood, California, the source of all this century's legends. No pilgrim to Lourdes can experience what I know I shall experience once I have stepped into that magic world which has occupied all my waking thoughts for twenty years . . .
Raquel's screenland novitiate was typically rugged. She lived in a $70-a-month apartment with her children. She had no job, no car, and her only income was a meager allowance from Welch, who by that time was serving with the Green Berets in Southeast Asia. Raquel, ever resourceful, tied up with Agent Noel Marshall, who coached her in the fundamentals of studio saleswomanship. Every day she rose at 6 a.m., dropped her children at a day-care center and set off on her unappointed rounds of photographers. It was a dreary life, but she kept plugging, waiting for a break.
Enter Patrick Curtis, a Hollywood product if there ever was one. At age two he won the Adohre Milk Company's Adohreable Baby Contest, a ringing triumph that earned him the role of Olivia de Havilland's baby in Gone With the Wind. He later played Ma and Pa Kettle's ninth kid, changed his name from Smith to Curtis (after his boyhood hero, Tony). When he was 13 he landed the TV role of Buzz in Leave It to Beaver; his eternally boyish face and buck teeth allowed him to keep the part for six years. Patrick wanted to get into the production end, though. He eventually wound up with Rogers and Cowan, a show business p.r. firm, and waited for his own break.